Phantom Pamphlets (4) The Dwarf Orchard

Further to the post yesterday, a document I’ve wanted to share for some time that further proves proper, good archeology is taking place in Greenwich these days.

Lara sent me a copy of the Dwarf Orchard’s archeological report a good couple of months ago, which makes fascinating reading. I wanted to share it with you, but it’s taken a while to get permissions. I have to thank all the (several) relevant people who actually kept my request bobbing along – from Mary Mills to EH to Keevill Heritage Consultancy (the guys who did the work) through to Royal Parks via, possibly, a bunch of other people I’m not aware of. But finally, I’ve managed to sort it out.

Of course I had hoped to find evidence of the comedy fountain but knew in my heart that delightful nonsense like that or the secret aviary would be totally lost by now, even if they had been sited in the Dwarf orchard (which they probably weren’t.) Though subsequent plantings have virtually eradicated most of the original fancy design (and the lovely old mulberry appears to be growing in a very inconvenient spot) archeaology doesn’t always mean digging in the ground. I am particularly enamoured of the maps and the photos, but the whole report is well written and intriguing – not always from what they found, but what they didn’t find.

For example, the well (which I’m disappointed no one wanted to climb down; I suspect the Underground Greenwich guys would have been down there like ninepence, however unsafe it is. Sometimes you just need nutty ninjas to do crazy things…) appears NOT to have been part of the Swiss-cheese network of conduits that run through Greenwich, however close it might be to the conduit house at the vicarage.

But what am I doing, waffling on as ever. The document can be found here.

the attachments to this post:

Dwarf Orchard

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2011 at 9:04 am and is filed under Archaeological Greenwich, Greenwich Park. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.